Leather and Blood
by Jair Amefuri
Summary: After Gluhen, Schuldig pays a visit to the Koneko, to find only a girl who was left behind.


Disclaimer: Weiß Kreuz and all characters are property of Koyasu Takehito and Project Weiß. No copyright infringement is intended. No profit is being made off these works of fanfiction. The lyrics at the beginning are from Rose of Pain by X-Japan, on their CD Blue Blood.  
  
//Leather and Blood//  
  
Why are you scared ?  
What have you seen ?  
In the castle with the silent roses  
I ask again and again  
  
Why are you sad ?  
What pain are you feeling ?  
Oh, I ask of the rose with its petals of blood  
But the rose of blood can't answer me till the end  
  
Scream without raising your voice  
  
The flower shop was dim and silent in the small hours of the night, the door barred and heavy shades pulled over windows emblazoned with the name and a kitten holding a basket of flowers. Aya loved that kitten. It was always cheerful and excited, presenting its bouquet of daffodils to the world. It made her smile whenever she passed the window; a smile was something she treasured, now.  
  
The phone on the counter rang and she jumped before reaching for it and holding her breath, as she had for the last year. But it was merely a solicitor, droning about some amazing new carpet-cleaning system. "Thank you, but I'm not interested." She hung up with a soft sigh before sinking back onto the bench near the door, retrieving a basket of roses waiting to be trimmed from a display.  
  
The soft snip of her shears was the only sound heard for the next hour, as she sliced the thick green stems at a diagonal and set them one by one in a vase. When the last was finished and she leaned to drop it from her fingers, a noise out front made her jump, and her thumb caught briefly on a thorn. Lowering the rose into the water, she stopped and stared at the thin red line across her pale skin, startling in its vibrancy.  
  
She rose from the bench and proceeded to the small sink in the back room usually used to wash wilting blooms that just needed a bit of a wake- up. She twisted the knobs and then held her hand under the stream of water, watching the red be thinned away and then drained. The line on her hand was barely noticeable now, and she wrapped it with a bit of gauze, tying of the end with her teeth.  
  
She'd had to learn to take care of herself in the past two years, after her brother and his friends disappeared. She hadn't heard from him for six months now. Just one phone call, and he hadn't said more than a word to here, but she knew it was he. Just. asking if she was all right.  
  
Aya turned off the still running faucet and turned to leave, stepping out from the back room into the space behind the counter. The streetlight around the cornor had gone out and the shop was even darker than before. She could barely make out the display stands and only practice allowed her to navigate through the room to her basket and florist shears, gathering them up. If the light was out, it was past midnight. She could usually sleep after midnight; it wouldn't hurt to try.  
  
Stifling a yawn with her free hand, Aya turned to check the lock on the door and then go up the stairs to her small apartment. As her hand tugged at the door and dropped, satisfied, she froze. There had been a small sound behind her, like a chair being moved as somebody got up.  
  
Her hand went to middle of her back, feeling for the gun she'd kept there ever since a group of punks tried to rob the shop over a year ago. Yojhi had taught her to use it, and she'd been practicing at ranges until she could get a permit to carry concealed.  
  
The heavy but small import automatic in her hand, she dropped the basket and raised it in a fluid motion, starring straight ahead.  
  
"Come out where I can see you." Thankfully neither her voice nor her hands shook as she squinted at the dark corner. After a minute she hesitated, getting the sinking feeling that she was overreacting. It had probably just been a cat. She was about to lower the gun when an amused, accented drawl from the shadows stopped her mid-action.  
  
"This kitty has claws."  
  
Aya stared in fixated silence and no small amount of terror, though her hands didn't tremble as she dropped the safety with a loud click. "Don't move."  
  
"You're not going to shoot me." There was a mile high arrogance in the answer, which made her bristle, a bit of the fear being replaced by anger. Then the owner of this odd voice stepped into the dim lighting of a low bulb hung from the ceiling, and her eyes widened in surprise. Thieves were not supposed to be gorgeous. And they definitely weren't supposed to be so, well, flamboyant.  
  
The intruder was a tall, lean man wearing a ankle-length black leather coat and matching boots, all she could see under the coat. His hair was past his shoulders and a brilliant, assaulting shade of red. There was a black leather scarf woven through the front of this hair, and the expression on his face was irritatingly pleased and smirking. His surprisingly bright blue eyes were fixed, not on her gun, which was currently aimed at his chest, but on her face.  
  
Aya felt her hand waver as something washed over her mind, urging her to be rational and put down the gun, like a nice -  
  
"Stay out of my head!" The man looked moderately taken aback for a moment, then he grinned at her, holding up his hands in mock surrender, though he was doing nothing of the sort.  
  
Then he was gone and behind her, arms folding her against him as his long fingers pulled the gun from her hand and emptied it before skidding it across the floor, where it crashed into the wall and spun for a moment before stopping.  
  
Aya didn't have time to struggle, her mind acting against her instinct to scream and run. He was still holding her, and the rich smell of well-worn leather and an undertone of something sweet and harsh was flooding her senses. There was a deep, back-of-the-throat chuckle behind her and the feel of his breath on her bare neck, where her hair parted into its braids. Then the voice again, right next to her ear.  
  
"I see I'm not the only one with claws, princess. I think I should leave before you come to your senses." Another chuckle, full of satisfied humor.  
  
"Au revoir, little kitten in your house."  
  
The arms withdrew and there was a fleeting touch of lips on her cheek, and then he was gone as quick as he arrived, with no sign of his presences except the gun resting against the display case and a clip of bullets at her feet.  
  
Aya knelt numbly and began to pick them up, when her hand encountered an unfamiliar flower. It was a rose, died black, with the tips left their original red. It was not something they sold at the Koneko. Written along the length of its dark stem was one word in delicate, flowing romaji. It took her a moment to read it and when she did, it wasn't one of the English or French words she knew from school. It said 'Schuldig'.  
  
"Schuldig." It had a very strange sound to it, but it almost seemed like she had heard it before.  
  
She murmured it again under her breath as she took both that rose and the one she had cut herself on earlier and put them together in a small vase to take upstairs with her.  
  
It was only as she dabbed the remainder of blood from the thorn that she realized something about her strange visitor.  
  
"His smell. It was leather and blood." 


End file.
